The present invention relates to a controlling program and a controlling method, and specifically relates to such a controlling program that is to be executed in an image forming apparatus or an apparatus coupled to the image forming apparatus concerned, and to such a controlling method that is to be employed in an image forming apparatus or a control apparatus.
In recent years, there have been increasingly proliferated in the market various kinds of image forming apparatuses, such as a copier provided with a copy function, a facsimile apparatus provided with a facsimile function, a printer provided with a printer function, a multi-functional apparatus provided with a scanner function in addition to the abovementioned functions (hereinafter, referred to as an image forming apparatus as a general term for each of them). When the image forming apparatus is employed as the network printer to implement the printing operation, at first, the image forming apparatus concerned receives print data represented in the format of the Page Description Language (hereinafter, also referred to as the PDL, for simplicity) sent from client terminal device coupled to the network, and then, rasterizes the received print data (namely, develops the print data into the bitmap) so as to create the multi-value image data (for instance, 8-bit image data), and further, applies the screening (binarizing) operation to the multi-value image data so as to create the binary image data, and finally, applies image adjusting operations to the binary image data as needed, in order to output an image based on the adjusted binary image data onto the paper sheet.
However, when plural image forming apparatuses are coupled to each other through the network, in order to implement such the processing for creating the multi-value image data from the print data (hereinafter, referred to as a RIP (Raster Image Processor) processing) and/or the screening processing of the multi-value image data within each of the plural image forming apparatuses, the functional capability for implementing the abovementioned processing should be provided in each of the plural image forming apparatuses. This forcibly complicates the configuration of each of the image forming apparatuses. Accordingly, in such a system as abovementioned, there has been employed such a system configuration that the printer controller provided with functions of the RIP processing and the screening processing is coupled to the network, so that the printer controller concerned implements the abovementioned processing by proxy of each of the plural image forming apparatuses.
In this connection, since the documents to be created by the client terminal device vary over a wide range, sometimes, a kind of paper sheet to be employed and/or the settings for finish processing would be changed corresponding to the use of the document. For instance, when creating a regular material, a normal paper sheet is usually employed for printing, and the printed paper sheet is outputted as it is, while, when creating an important material, sometimes, a thick and colored paper sheet is employed for printing, and a finish processing, such as a punching operation, etc., is applied to the printed paper sheet before outputting it. On that occasion, since it is cumbersome for the user to set a kind of paper sheet, a method of finish processing, etc. for every time when implementing a printing operation, the image forming apparatus, developed in recent years, is so constituted that it is possible to give a name to setting information, including a kind of paper sheet, a finish processing, etc., in regard to a certain printing operation and to register the name of the setting information in advance, so that the printing operation according to the setting information designated by the user can be automatically implemented, only by designating the name of the setting information.
With respect to the abovementioned registering function of the setting information, for instance, Tokkai 2001-290625 (Japanese Non-Examined Patent Publication) sets forth such a configuration that, in the dispersion print controlling apparatus in which a printing operation is conducted by dispersing the print data concerned among a plurality of printers, the apparatus comprises: a display device to display a data inputting screen for setting predetermined conditions in regard to a printing ability provided for each of printers; a condition setting section to acquire the data inputted from the data inputting screen so as to establish the predetermined conditions based on the inputted data; a printer ability information acquiring section to acquire ability information in regard to the predetermined conditions provided in each of the plurality of printers; and a data input limiting section to limit an input allowable range of the data to be inputted from the data inputting screen to such a range that corresponds to the ability information of each printer, acquired by the printer ability information acquiring section.
As described in the above, according to the abovementioned configuration, since the setting information is registered in advance in the image forming apparatus concerned, it is possible for the client terminal device or the printer controller to acquire the setting information registered in advance. Accordingly, only by selecting the name of the setting information concerned on the screen displayed by the printer driver of the client terminal device or the application program of the printer controller, the user can designate the printing conditions as the desired conditions.
However, in such the dispersion outputting mode that makes a single printer driver or a single application program control a plurality of image forming apparatuses, since the setting information can be individually registered by each of the image forming apparatuses, there arises a possibility that plural sets of setting information, contents of which are different from each other, are registered under the same name. In such the case, since the user cannot recognize the differences between the plural sets of setting information only by referring the name of them, there has been a problem that the printing operation has been implemented under the conditions undesired by the user.